Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
of waste, and easy to ensure that nutrients cascade back to the land in the form of manure.
A pig in every backyard is like a living dustbin in every backyard. Another US study of
small-scale pig production in China observed:
Hogs in China frequently consume large amounts of green roughage such as water
plants, vegetable leaves, tubers, carrots, pumpkins, and various crop stalks … green
feeds account for 18 per cent of total feed consumption in backyard hog operations.
Grain byproducts, such as bran and hulls are also used to feed swine … By products
from restaurants and manufactured food processes, such as alcohol, tofu and bean and
tuber noodle production averaged between two and six per cent of total feed in back-
yard production. Frequently the primary grain and grain byproducts used for feed are
derived from the crops grown and processed on the farm. Swine rations on backyard
farms contain approximately 36.1 per cent purchased concentrate feeds, and in some
provinces, such as Jilin, Shandong and Shaanxi, the share of concentrates in total feed
is less than 20 per cent.
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The authors found that on the smaller farms (under 200kg pork per year) grain was only
31 per cent of the ration, while on the largest farms (over 500 kg of pork) it represented
nearly 40 per cent of the ration. The researchers also discovered that the more educated a
farmer was, the more concentrate he was likely to feed his pigs - which doesn't say a lot
for education.
Nor is pig-keeping restricted to the countryside:
The Chinese do not waste anything that could be used as food for domestic an-
imals or fowls. Peasants in the suburbs will collect kitchen wastes to feed pigs and
poultry. Nearly all Chinese institutions - factories, offices, schools, barracks - run din-
ing halls for their workers. These canteens usually keep pigs in their backyard as they
can feed the animals on kitchen wastes. This is a regular practice in small cities and
towns close to rural areas. Hygienic considerations restrict this practice in large cit-
ies.
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However, the Chinese are beginning to catch the British disease. That was written in
1987, and since then things have changed. Pork production has roughly tripled, outstrip-
ping US production, and now more than half of all pork in the world is produced in China.
By the mid 1990s, 15 per cent of this pork was being produced in factory farms sited near
large cities, and that figure has undoubtedly increased over the last ten years.
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